48 Hours - `Sister, Sister' by Team `WKWHA'

Genre -Buddy FilmBuddy Quotient -With the title, several questions came to my head, first was are they male or female buddies?Greatest moment -When the sisters each stood in front of a room and fired away the bullets. It was quirky and understatedly stylishWorst moment -When you thought under pressure to shoot her buddy sister, she would not do it. But alas, she goes on to do it.Production value -I have an image of a blanket pegged haphazardly over a window to block out sunlight so as to create that underground look. And many more but THAT takes the cake (a cheesecake probably)

This film panders to a few popular tastes. If you are after kung fu chicks, there is plenty of high kicks and arm swerves. Pity about the waitress-like uniforms. They should be wearing lycra, rubber or leather catsuits with suggestive looking zips that dance with the fighting actions. If you are after that foreign language feel, this was the only film with that nice vernacular subtitling effect. Sometimes, I tend to think subtitling can conveniently make any film look serious and art-housey. If you are after triads and gangsters, there is that Hokkien Speaking uncle for you.

Taking away the guise of sure-to-please genres like the above, the story is a little weird. A triad leader finds a new girl who is willing to join the team. He then poses a challenge to her immediately as a first assignment. Of course, it involves killing people. But she works with another accomplice. Both of them are dressed in white shirt and black pants, looking very much like waitresses who do big 9-course catered Chinese dinners in open tents or community centres. Maybe the film should be called `colleagues'. And without much training, they fight like Michelle Yeoh. The fighting scenes were really commendable though because for the limited 48 hours of producing time, it displayed some level of difficulty. Sometimes, they even fished out guns to shoot.

Finally, without much struggle, they succeeded and got back to the boss, who is still sitting in that classroom desk in the underground hole, looking more like a shrink than anything else. Then, it is time for rewards, the newbie gets a lot of things, the oldie, gets an Hongbao. Inside it is a writtehn instruction to kill the newbie. If they are HK sisters or Taiwanese sisters or maybe Malaysian sisters, one could expect more integrity and drama. But they are Singaporean sisters, so follow instructions lor. She dutifully did the job. The filmmakers must be thinking : Cannot take it anymore, we need to sleep, let's end the story.'